210 notes to chapter 1
- A clever idea in theory, but in practice his narrative vacillates between heroic
couplets and ballad meter. Herbert F. Tucker, in Epic: Britain’s Heroic Muse 1790–
1910 writes, “one hardly knows what to call” Dibdin’s history (150) and concludes
that the poem displays “a nationalism secure enough to make fun of itself ” (151). - Hall, “At Home With History: Macaulay and The History of England,” At Home
with Empire, 32–52, as well as Hall, McClelland, and Rendall, Defining the Victorian
Nation. - London University’s matriculation examination made history compulsory from
the start (1838), and it was included in examination requirements of the Civil Service
(1854–55, 1870) and the Army (1870). The Schools Inquiry Commission and pub-
lishing house data shows that the four most popular books were Mangnall’s Historical
and Miscellaneous Questions for the use of young people, reprinted many times between
1804 and 1891; Gleig’s School History of England;, W. F. Collier’s History of the British
Empire; and Ince’s An Outline of English History. From Howat, “The Nineteenth-
Century History Textbook,” 147–58. - “In committing the fibre of a material so raw to the metrical loom, a coarse tissue
must necessarily be worked out—coarse but genuine—a greater regard having been
paid to its durability than its appearance” (Raymond, Chronicles of England, xvii). - Rossendale, History of the Kings and Queens of England from King Egbert to
Queen Victoria, preface, no page number. - Montefiore, The History of England in Verse (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler,
1876), 2. - Robson, “Standing on the Burning Deck: Poetry, Performance, History,”
148–62. - Other books with mnemonic ciphers include Feinaigle, The New Art of Memory
Founded on the Principles Taught by Gregor von Feinaigle; Fauvel-Gouraud and Miles
Phreno-mnemotechny; and Fuller, The Art of Memory: In Byron’s Don Juan, he jokes
about Donna Inez’s perfect memory, which did not need the aid of Feinaigle
the hack:
—memory was a mine; she knew by heart
All Calderon and the greater part of Lopé
So that if any actor missed his part
She could have served him for the prompter’s copy;
For her Feinaigle’s were an useless art,
And he himself obliged to shut up shop, — he
Could never make a memory so fine as
That which adorned the brain of Donna Inez.
(Don Juan, I, xi, 1818)
Lewis Carroll’s Memoria Technica (s.n.), which was a numerical cipher but certainly
influenced by the new memorization techniques, wasn’t published widely until 1888
(though there was a small 1877 edition).
- Bourne, Granny’s History of England in Rhyme, 1.
- Mann, School Recreations and Amusements, Being a Companion Volume to King’s
School Interests and Duties, Prepared Especially for Teachers’ Reading Circles, 175–76. - Stray and Sutherland, “Mass Markets: Education,” 359–81, 359, 360.